Robin Welch

An interesting colour in a small jollied bowl with the round mark.

Never seen that type of decoration before, philpot, so I imagine it wasn't popular at the time.

This is Robin Welch holding one of the very first pieces of ceramics he made With a CLOSE UP PHOTO OF IT.

Robin Welch in his studio
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A leaflet on the domestic Jollies pots and a photo of the stockroom.

Commemorative mug, Bristol Guild 1908-1975

Six pieces made by Robin Welch, plus a coffee pot and teapot below.

The large tankard has Bristol 1979 impressed on it and the mug on the right The London Design Centre.

These came from the time when you might say Robin Welch ran a studio production pottery. Nearly all jollied. They do seem to have done fair amount of specialist 'souvenir' work as well.

Yes, they are uniformal, but the quality is fabulous.

I also have a mug impressed with Bressingham Gardens - Diss Norfolk and once had a Cambridge tankard.

I wonder if he got commissions via word-of-mouth, or if he hawked his ware.

It might well be word of mouth or advertising. His pottery was in a fairly  remote rural setting. A few miles from, Diss. 20 miles from Bury St Edmunds, 15-miles  or so from Norwich. Not the sort of place you get a lot of passing custom.
           Equally of course, he established a reputation as an important potter quite early on.

A "Sir Robin" from around 2012.

A footed bowl c 2010

Hello,

I wondered if anyone might be able to help me to roughly date this piece?

Thank you...

It's part of his early standard ware range

What 'standard ware means, Is that for several years after he started his Suffolk pottery in 1965, he had a team of assistants making uniform pottery in thrown, jigger and jolleyed techniques. This produced a substantial amount of identical items, over a fairly wide range.
           So pottery with this sort of mark on is probably not made by Robin Welch himself. But by a person in a team of potters. In a similar way that an item labelled Bernard Leach St Ives standard ware was not made by Bernard Leach.
Below is a link to page 4 of our Robin Welch thread. Scroll down and she will see a photo of a leaflet advertising the types of Stadard ware they mase.
https://www.20thcenturyforum.com/t4271p75-robin-welch?highlight=robin+welch

Thank you both :)

Apologies if previously  posted - scanned, did not see.


Robin Welch obituary

Robin Welch, potter and painter, born 23 July 1936; died 5 December 2019
Ceramicist whose pots expressed his love of the landscape, particularly that of Australia

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/dec/27/robin-welch-obituary


Robin Welch, who has died aged 83, was one of a small group of significant potters who expanded the language of throwing (or shaping) pots on the wheel, in his case through post-wheel additions and alteration. This gave his generally cylindrical forms a more organic and sculptural aspect, but their heavily coloured and textured surfaces were as much about painting, too, as Robin sought an integration of the visual disciplines he enjoyed. As he once wrote: “There’s no divide between art or craft. You decide to be an artist and you’ll use anything. If marooned on a desert island you’d use driftwood.”

...

Thanks for that Crawford. Is it years since he died? My but time passes so fast. I wonder how his reputation will last? He was always somewhat outside of the mainstream and had his own superb individual style

On The Antiques Roadshow last Sunday the "Basic, Better, Best" feature was made up of three pieces of studio pottery. One by Robin Welch, one by Dan Arbeid and one by James Tower. The general consensus was that the Robin Welch was the best so maybe his work will continue to be valued.

Oh thanks for that Studio I will have a look at that on iplayer. I tend to do Antiques roadshow on fast forward now. It has become really stereo typed and stuffily 'correct'.!

Some nice pieces on that Antiques roadshow bit. The Dan Arbeid was very unusual, and the James Tower was superb. The Robin Welch was really nice looking, and perhaps the most conventional of the three pieces.
I must admit to being a big Fan of his work. I have been cataloguing my collection lately. I have twelve pieces of his work. A Great potter.

Robin Welch via Art In Clay Hatfield 2015